Defense: Playbook Tweet Much Ado About Nothing

Evidently D.J. Williams caused more of a stir in the Twitterverse than within his own locker room.

Four days after Williams tweeted a picture including six diagrams from the team’s iPad-based playbook, he was back at practice with teammates who had largely shrugged off the tempest that ensued when he shared the snapshot, then deleted it.

“People don’t understand that kind of stuff,” said cornerback Champ Bailey, who phoned Williams “immediately” after he made the noteworthy tweet via Instagram.

“People could look at that a million times and not know what the hell is going on. But at the same time, even people in the NFL don’t know what the hell that is. They know what it is, but it doesn’t tell me anything. Everybody does that.

“Everybody in the league would understand what it is. But really? You think we’re going to run that every play? It’s not like that.”

It would take something supernatural for an opponent to decipher what Williams shared, added cornerback Tracy Porter.

“If a team we play can know when we line up that we’re running that play, hats off to them. They know something that I don’t know. They have psychic powers,” he said.

Even Broncos coach John Fox didn’t express concern.

“I think all in all our guys do a great job of keeping our fans informed,” he said. “You’re going to have a couple of mishaps and you just move on.”

To Bailey, the furor over the tweet was simply the product of a typical offseason in which followers are starved for news.

“Of course people are going to blow it up because the NFL is so sacred,” Bailey said. “It’s just funny how people are going to react to any NFL news. It was really overblown, but at the same time, got to be careful about that kind of stuff because people take it the wrong way.”

Added Porter: “We know DJ is a good guy. We’re not taking anything negative from it.”

About Andrew Mason

Andrew Mason has covered the NFL since 1999, when he worked as an editor on NFL.com when the site was managed by ESPN.com. He worked six seasons (2002-07) covering the Broncos on their official website and two (2008-09) on the Panthers' site. He began MaxDenver.com in 2010 and now contributes to CBSSports.com, The Sporting News and The New York Times.